Wikis

I chose to write about an article entitled “Wikis” Offer Knowledge-Sharing Online Wikipedia’s one million entries larger than Encyclopedia Britannica by anick Jesdanum.
The articles starts with a story about a man who used wikipedia to look up his hometown, when he did not find an entry he chose to write one of his own. This is due to new wave of online communities called wikis that let people add delete and edit entries.
There are some wikis dedicated solely to things such as cookbooks, guitar players, manuals, and more. Downfalls to wikis include spammers and other sorts of mischief. The word wiki comes from a Hawaiian word “wiki wiki” which means quick. The first wiki was created in 1995 and wikipedia followed in 2001.
The article then goes into detail about Wikipedia and its many forms. Stockepedia, and Wikitravel are two other types of wikis that have information about investments and travel.
Some of the downfalls to wikis are the fact that anyone can post and edit on them. One security company refuses to work with these sites because the workers did not have enough time to go through all the entries everyday. The other downfall to wikis is that the information on them might not always be the most up to date or the most accurate. The entries do not have to be approved in order to be posted so they might not be correct. On the other hand the array of information these websites can provide is much more vast than any regular encyclopedia or book can give you.
This is a great tool for students and teachers. Wikis cans provide a “one stop shop” idea for information. Wikipedia is great for finding credible information about things you would otherwise be unable to find information about. For example, the boy above that input an article about his hometown. The downfalls are as mentioned above, the availability of the site and editing to anyone makes some sources less credible. But as long as students are careful and make sure the article comes from a credible source they should have no problem.
I personally think Wikipedia is great. I use it for everything and recommend it to everyone. I think that the most well known wiki, Wikipedia, is making great strides in making everything on their site a credible source. Other smaller sites should try and advance their sites by doing the same.

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